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What Do I Know?
How Michel de Montaigne’s motto, “Que sais-je?”, can guide us today
These feel like some of the most uncertain times in history. The universe has been cooling since the Big Bang. But my social media feed doesn’t cool off. It’s full of anxious users enraged over politics or personal life. This nagging sparked my interest in philosophy, and I found a 16th-century gem: a book that sits with doubt, death, and the limits of knowledge.
Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), a French essayist and philosopher, wrote extensively on human nature in his Essays. In his very first essay, he tells stories of Alexander the Great and Scanderbeg. He beautifully explains their whims and fancies, throwing light on human behaviour. Those quirks have hardly changed in five hundred years. What has changed is how loudly we broadcast our certainties, and how anxious that leaves us.
Montaigne gives ample examples from past heroes that still resonate. His motto, “Que sais-je?” (What do I know?) is the main theme of all his inquiry.
The question on the medal
In 1571, at thirty-eight years old, Montaigne withdrew himself to the tower of his château. He had the beams of the library inscribed with Greek and Latin maxims about doubt, death, and the limits of knowledge. It was a period of…
